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That Guy
At 8:35 a.m., Oswald walked clown the "DMZ" to confront a prisoner delegation led by Clark. Brother Richard said he wanted more time; again he demanded "complete, total, unadulterated amnesty" and the removal of "that guy Mancusi." At 9:05 a.m., a convict shouted down the corridor through a mega phone that all hostages would be killed if state troopers tried to storm the compound. Replied Oswald's chief assistant, Walter Dunbar: "Release the prisoners now. Then the commissioner will meet with you." The fatal one-word reply was "Negative."
Moments later, the prisoners marched four hostages to the top of Times Square. An "executioner" pulled back the head of each and held a knife to his throat. Elsewhere in D yard, grim convicts, taking up similar positions be side each of the other hostages, poised as if to kill them with either a knife or crowbar. Oswald turned to aides:
"There's no question now — we've got to go in." Recalling that decision, he said later: "On a much smaller scale, I think I have some feeling now of how Truman must have felt when he decided to drop the A-bomb."
The operation was speeded up. At 9:32, a radio observer in a helicopter reported that hostages, guarded by six inmates, were confined within a circle of park benches in the yard. Sharpshooters were advised to take aim at the threatening convicts—"but you'll have to have hostile action by the inmates to fire." Then the two helicopters, loaded with tear-gas canisters, swept low over the prison, one of them barely clearing the walls. "To all posts," barked the command radio. "Jackpot One is about to make drop." There was a pause. "Jackpot has made drop. Base to all posts —move in; launch the offensive."
The choking gas, which induces tears and nausea, filled the yard. At first the gunfire was barely audible over the roar of the choppers. From one helicopter, an amplified voice kept repeating: "Put your hands over your head. Walk to the outside of the yard. You will not be harmed. Do not harm the hostages."
But as troopers dropped into the clouded compound, hostage blurred with prisoner. Some rescuers tried to reach the captive guards and pull them to safety. Others headed unresisting inmates toward the secure cell blocks. But there was an abundance of shooting. "We piled through and raced past Times Square," recalled one police sergeant. "The ones that resisted—throwing spears and Molotov cocktails—were cut down. We caught some men with arms extended to throw weapons. Anybody that resisted was killed." Claimed one officer: "They came at us like a banzai charge, waving knives and spears. Those we had to shoot."
Yet much of the shooting may not have been all that necessary. A team of doctors who treated prisoners in their cells later said inmates in widely-separated parts of the prison described in identical